Indiana
Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
would be nothing without its iconic title character.
But while Indy may fancy himself a solitary scholar
and a lone wolf, his travels always seem to couple
him with an eclectic assortment of friends, enemies
and every questionable alliance in between.

“There
is a certain amount of comfortable melodrama that
always takes place in the storytelling,”
says executive producer Kathleen Kennedy. “There’s
the villain - and this one definitely has a great
villain. There’s the banter with Indy and
whoever his counterpart is - and we have a great
sidekick. Indy always has a love interest, he’s
got buddies along the way, people who betray him,
and people who are not what they appear to be,
and that’s what makes it fun.”

For the latest Indiana Jones adventure,
the filmmakers assembled an impressive international
cast - led, of course, by the inimitable Harrison
Ford.

Director Steven Spielberg calls
Ford “the secret weapon.
From the very beginning, Harrison was and is the
center of Indiana Jones.”

In Dr. Jones, Ford has created a
screen hero whose enduring appeal is a unique
combination of no-nonsense toughness and snake-fearing
humility.

Harrison Ford as
Indiana Jones

“Harrison’s
a man’s man,” says co-star
Shia LaBeouf, who portrays Indy’s unwitting
sidekick as they go in search of the legendary
Crystal Skull. “So
when you put him into these situations where he’s
vulnerable, it’s hysterical. Any vulnerabilities
Indy has - and there are a lot of them - are funny.
Indiana Jones is very rough around the edges,
but he’s actually a really good person,
and that’s also just the way Harrison is.
He’s an action man, and he makes an art
form out of it. No one else is Indiana Jones.”

Returning to the unforgettable role
of the intrepid archaeologist, Ford knew that
there would be tremendous stunt demands put on
him, so he went into training to ensure he’d
be up to the task and that a stunt double could
be used as rarely as possible. “He
wants to be Indiana Jones and doesn’t want
anyone else doing those stunts,”
says producer Marshall. “In
this movie, there’s a lot of running around,
chasing, jumping, whipping, rolling around in
the jungle, and Harrison did it all. It’s
a real testament to his passion for the character,
and it comes through on the screen. You see that
it’s him, and you know that it’s real.”

Ford has been one of the silver
screen’s most iconic actors for more than
three decades, and his biggest break (after a
walk-on role as a bellhop in 1966’s Dead
Heat on a Merry-Go-Round) came in George
Lucas’s American
Graffiti in 1973. Lucas then cast Ford
as Han Solo in Star Wars,
even though the actor originally only intended
to help read lines with auditioning actors.

Likewise, Ford wasn’t the
original choice for Indiana Jones - but today,
it would be nearly impossible to imagine anyone
else in the role. That’s doubly true, Lucas
says, now that Indy has aged as a character. “In
this movie, Harrison gets to portray a huge evolution
of the character, as he moves from the 1930s to
the 1950s,” he says. “Pushing
the plot forward has been a bit of an adventure
in more ways than one, because we’re breaking
the mold while keeping the films consistent. The
reason it works this time is the same reason it
has always worked: Harrison Ford.”

The actor’s return to the
role brought feelings of excitement and nostalgia
to everyone on the set - especially to Spielberg.
“To see Harrison walk
on the set, pick up the whip, snap it and wrap
it around one of the bad guys was pretty incredible,”
he says. “It was amazing
to see how fast Harrison was with it - and then
be on the set to see Indy’s rucksack and
his other props ... well, it wasn’t just
nostalgia. That was when I realized that we were
bringing this character and everything he’s
about back to the audience that grew up with him,
as well as to new audiences.”

For his part, LaBeouf thinks that
once they see Indiana Jones back in action, audiences
of all ages in theaters will share the excitement
the actor experienced on set. “Maybe
people my age never saw them in the theater, but
Indiana Jones is huge for us,” he
says. “It’s
huge for all generations.”

Shia LaBeouf
as
Mutt Williams

LaBeouf’s character, Mutt,
is integral to Indy’s newest escapade, and
bringing the character to the screen proved to
be an adventure in itself for the actor. The rising
star of Transformers,
Disturbia and
this fall’s Eagle
Eye, found himself thrust into the action
from the moment he learned he got the part.

“Steven
wrote a little note on my script that said, ‘OK,
now it’s time to transform yourself into
Mutt! Signed, Steven,’ and then he gave
me three movies to watch,” LaBeouf
says of his preparation for the role. The movies:
The Blackboard Jungle,
Rebel Without a Cause
and The Wild One.
The latter still makes LaBeouf chuckle. “As
though I was supposed to go home and watch ‘The
Wild One’ and go, ‘Oh, yeah, I see
how Marlon Brando did it!’”

Nonetheless, he soon found himself
learning about his unique character. “Mutt’s
a kid who’s never really had a normal upbringing.
He quit school and became obsessed with motorcycles
and machinery,” he says. “There’s
so much about Mutt that he never really got to
talk about, so now he prefers not to. He’s
like a man-boy, a person who on the outside is
presenting himself to be something he’s
really not.”

Mutt’s isolated, solitary
’50s rebel proves to be an interesting counterpoint
to Dr. Jones himself, LaBeouf says. “In
some ways, this quest is really about forging
and re-creating a family. First with Indiana,
then with the others they meet, their unit becomes
stronger as all this insanity happens - you know,
each punch is bringing them closer together!”

Preparing the character was only
part of LaBeouf’s Indiana Jones adventure.
As soon as he signed on, he says he knew there
would be more - much more. “You
just know that you’re going to get it coming
onto an Indiana Jones movie - you know you’re
going to get it! That was one of my first thoughts:
Something horrible is going to happen to me.”
Through it all - snakes, swords, knives and motorcycles
- LaBeouf found his most exciting moment came
when he first laid eyes on Harrison Ford as Indiana
Jones.

“You
get breathless,” he says. “Your
breath literally leaves you. For me, though, part
of that reaction had to do with the way I saw
him in full costume for the first time. We were
on an Air Force base, and we were doing vehicle
training. Harrison flew in on a helicopter. He
got out of the helicopter, took five or six steps,
then reached back for something. It was his whip!
It’s weird, because in that moment, he wasn’t
Harrison Ford - he was Indiana Jones. I was watching
him pulling out that whip, untangling it, putting
grease on it, and then he held it and I thought,
‘Oh, my God. This is real.’”

Karen Allen as
Marion Ravenwood

But Indiana Jones isn’t the
only returning screen favorite in Indiana
Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
To Indy’s surprise, he also reunites with
the greatest love of his life, a woman he’s
never completely been able to forget: Marion Ravenwood,
again played by Karen Allen. For the story, bringing
back Marion made complete sense, says screenwriter
David Koepp. “The
thing about Marion and Indy is that they so clearly
belong together.”

Executive producer Kathleen Kennedy
adds, “The minute
Karen smiles, she’s right back to when we
were shooting the first movie. There’s very
little that’s changed about her spirit.”

Allen does smile when she reflects
on Marion’s fiery spirit, which illuminated
Raiders of the Lost Ark.
“She’s a very
strong character,” Allen says. “I
think she’s somebody who fell very hard
for Indy when she was a teenager, and in that
wonderful, old-fashioned, romantic way, Indiana
Jones is the love of her life."

“But,”
Allen observes, “he
wasn’t the kind of person who could be around,
and she understood that from the beginning. She
was a modern girl. A lot of people said she was
‘spunky.’ It’s not just spunk
- she’s resourceful. She knows how to take
care of herself and take care of other people.
She didn’t want to stop Indy from being
who he is.”

Allen’s return to the screen
is something her fellow actors were eager to see.
“Everyone just cheered
at the end of her first take,” says
co-star Cate Blanchett. “She’s
just this extraordinarily liberated presence onscreen.
I remember seeing her for the first time and thinking
there was no other heroine I’d ever seen
as free and feisty as that. Karen is just so buoyant.
You fall in love with her both as a person and
a screen presence.”

For Lucas, there’s a good
reason audiences have found Marion to be the most
memorable, and perhaps formidable, of Indy’s
on-screen loves. “Marion
has got a great sense of humor, and that’s
really Karen,” he says. “She’s
fun to be with, she’s strong, she’s
up to Indy and you believe that only she could
put him in his place. They’re a real team
together.”

Cate Blanchett
as
Irina Spalko

Marion isn’t the only strong
female character he encounters this time around
- indeed, the story’s ruthless villain is
Soviet agent Irina Spalko. Oscar(R) and BAFTA
Award-winning actress Cate Blanchett plays Spalko,
leader of the Soviet Army’s quest for the
Crystal Skull. It’s the first time she’s
played what she terms an “out-and-out
baddie,” and she says it turned out
to be gleeful fun.

“Spalko
has an almost impenetrable steel-like quality
to her - you know, not a hair out of place, no
matter what she’s doing, never anything
on her boots no matter what mud she’s walking
through,” Blanchett says. “There’s
a remarkable precision about her. She’s
penetrating and, therefore, potentially lethal.”

While on set, Blanchett says, “You’ve
got to be ready for anything, because Steven often
changes things in the moment.” Blanchett
learned to fence for an intense sword fighting
scene that took place in the jungle - on top of
moving vehicles. And if that wasn’t enough,
the director decided to throw one more thing in
the mix. “We were
doing a chase sequence through the jungle in Hawaii
and all of a sudden, he wanted to introduce a
karate-chop sequence,” Blanchett
recalls, “so we had
to get that together very quickly. It’s
a great way to work, actually, because it means
that everything you do is really fueled and focused
by adrenaline.”

Executive producer George Lucas
thinks audiences will have a fantastic feeling
when watching Blanchett. “Movie
stars don’t get a chance to play villains
very often, so it’s a fun, juicy, exciting
thing,” he says. “Spalko
is somebody who will stop at nothing to get what
she wants, and that’s what makes a good
villain. As the audience, you have to believe
it, you have to be afraid of it, and the way Cate
plays this, you’re definitely afraid of
her.”

As an Indiana Jones newcomer, Blanchett
says she was amazed by the intense curiosity that
surrounded the project. “I
don’t think I realized before we began just
how many people were desperate for another installment.
It’s really a fantastic feeling.”

As seriously as Blanchett took the
task of playing a formidable villain, she says
part of her was always giddy about being in an
Indiana Jones movie. “Everyone
at my primary school wanted to kiss Harrison Ford,
but I actually wanted to be Harrison Ford. I wanted
to be Indiana Jones! When Harrison and Karen Allen
were on screen together it was utterly electric,
utterly transporting. The ‘Raiders’
theme still gives me goose bumps.”

... Friends and Sidekicks

Behind every great adventurer are
equally great friends, and in Indiana
Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,
they are portrayed by some of the most renowned
actors in the world, who populate the story with
indelible characters.

“The
beauty of having Steven direct an action/adventure
movie like Indiana Jones is that he’s capable
of attracting a very high caliber of talent,”
explains executive producer Kathleen Kennedy.
“That’s never
been truer than in ‘Kingdom of the Crystal
Skull.’”

John Hurt as
Harold "Ox" Oxley

The movie’s distinguished
cast includes Oscar(R)-nominated actor John Hurt,
who portrays an old colleague of Indy’s
who is reported missing as Kingdom
of the Crystal Skull begins. Hurt’s
character has spent much of his life pursuing
the Crystal Skull of Akator, and the endless search
has nearly driven him mad.

Director Steven Spielberg says he
hoped from the start that Hurt would accept the
role, which was inspired by the character Ben
Gunn in the Robert Louis Stevenson classic Treasure
Island. “I sent the
script to John and said, ‘Please, John,
think of Ben Gunn when you read the script.’
And he did. And he plays the part brilliantly.”

Hurt elaborates: “He’s
the man who was left on the island for 20 years
before they came back for him. But, as it turns
out, my character isn’t a man who was simply
left on his own - he is a man who has become possessed,
which comes out as a kind of madness. Of course,
the Russians have also now become interested in
the skull for completely different reasons, and
that’s where the story picks up.”

Ray Winstone
as
George "Mac" McHale

Veteran actor Ray Winstone, who
gained the attention of international audiences
in the gritty gangster film Sexy
Beast, is also new to the Indiana Jones
cast. Indy regards “Mac” George Michale
as a friend, but screenwriter Koepp says Winstone’s
character isn’t quite as simple as that.
“The fun part about
Mac is that you never quite know whether to believe
him. He bends the truth to suit his purposes.
But it’s utterly charming, and he’s
really good at it, so just like Indy, we like
him and, against our better instincts, we trust
him.”

Winstone was Spielberg’s first
and only choice to play Mac. “I
knew Ray Winstone from seeing him in “Sexy
Beast.” When I saw that film, I said, ‘I
want to work with that actor!’ I think he
is one of the most brilliant actors around.”

Winstone himself says he sympathizes
with Mac, who finds himself walking a jagged line
between the competing powers of the Americans
and the Soviets. “There
was a lot of confusion after World War II, with
the rise of the Iron Curtain and the start of
the Cold War. Figuring out who you were working
for and who you were working against must have
been crazy.”

A favorite character from Raiders
of the Lost Ark and Indiana
Jones and the Last Crusade was Marcus Brody,
the museum curator and longtime friend of Indy
and his father. While Denholm Elliott, who portrayed
Brody, died in 1992, the character receives a
fitting tribute in Kingdom
of the Crystal Skull- and Indy has a new,
trusted adviser at Marshall College.

Dean Charles Stanforth, played by
Oscar(R) winner Jim Broadbent, is also “a
close friend and colleague of Indiana’s,
and they have known each other for many years
at the university,” Broadbent says.
“Dean Stanforth is
Indy’s immediate supervisor, but they have
a good, humorous and close-sharing relationship.
Harrison is a lovely actor to work with, so that
makes it easy.”

Spielberg says Broadbent “brings
a beautiful camaraderie in replacing the loss
of Denholm Elliott. Jim brings the same kind of
humanity that Denholm lent to the character of
Marcus. The deep, deep friendship Dean Stanforth
has with Indiana Jones is very important, and
plays a major role in the story.”

Igor Jijikine
as
Colonel Dovchenko

To accompany evil Agent Spalko,
this adventure introduces a new character, Col.
Dovchenko, the leader of Spalko’s traveling
henchmen. Igor Jijikine, who had been a high-wire
trapeze artist for Cirque du Soleil, plays Dovchenko.
His comrades-in-arms include Dmitri Diatchenko
and, from the hit television series Lost,
Andrew Divoff.

“Pat
Roach, who was our iconic muscleman villain, passed
away, and we were very sad not to have him in
this picture,” explains Spielberg.
“I was looking for
someone to fit the kind of role he used to play.
Debbie Zane, our casting director brought Igor
in, and I thought he’d be a terrific villain.”

Good guys and bad guys, sidekicks
and rivals - they’re familiar territory,
and Spielberg says he wouldn’t have it any
other way. “I wasn’t
trying to make this movie bigger or better,”
he says. “I wanted
this to be a blood relative to the other three
‘Raiders’ pictures - which is what
I love to call them. The world knows them as ‘Indiana
Jones films.’ I call them ‘Raiders
pictures.’”

This
site is in no way affiliated with Lucasfilm Ltd. or Paramount
Pictures. Copyrights and trademarks for the films, books,
articles, and other promotional materials are held by
their respective owners and their use is allowed under
the
fair use clause of the Copyright
Law.
Hosting provided by Nexcess.net